I stumbled upon it a Reddit thread This really caught my attention.
Someone asked, “What was the ‘one thing’ that ultimately made your weight loss successful?”
And there were 5,400 answers to this question (and counting).
Some of the answers involved environmental changes or changing the way they prepared their food:
“Pour snacks into small ramekins to eat. Suddenly I was eating a normal amount of snacks.”
“I prepared my typical amount of food and instead of putting it in two containers, I divided it evenly into four containers. I forced myself to only eat 1 can per meal and tricked my brain into thinking it was my normal amount.”
Others changed their eating habits:
“I found a salad that I really like. Sounds stupid, but I’d never had a craving for a salad before, and since I really liked one, I had to spend a few weeks eating a lot of salad – it just skyrocketed from there because I really liked it felt good and then started to feel like it was good.”
Some took a more holistic approach that included reassessing their relationship with food, hunger, and discomfort:
“Realizing that it is a lifestyle change, NOT a diet.”
“Embrace the suffering. Expect to breathe heavily and feel uncomfortable during cardio workouts, to experience muscle soreness after exercise, and to feel hungry as you limit your intake.”
Others used apps to track their calorie intake, which helped them realize how much they were eating:
“I use an app to track everything I’ve eaten. I realized that a lot of the “healthy” things I was eating had a lot more calories in the amounts I was eating than I thought. Just reducing certain foods helped.”
And some had success thanks to an initial foray into medication:
“I saw a doctor about my type 2 diabetes. I weighed over 300 pounds and also had coronary artery disease. I qualified for diabetes medication, which also helps control appetite. Started counting calories and exercising.”
“Semaglutide”
Some prioritized physical activity rather than focusing on food:
“Find a hobby. I binged because I was bored. Coming home from work and sitting on the couch would make it a lot easier to eat like shit…Now I just go and do something I like so I don’t have any distractions while eating.”
“Walking. Confirmation that I lost 45 pounds in 7 months just by walking around my neighborhood every night. It was free and low impact, I even walked through blizzards rain or shine. Now I have a treadmill and walk Walking inside, but the feeling is still as great as it was at the beginning.”
Looking through this list and reading thousands of comments from people reflecting on the “one thing” that changed their lives, and how different many of them are, we can draw some fascinating conclusions.
3 short lessons we can learn
LESSON 1: “Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.” -Winston Churchill.
The hardest part about getting healthy is not Losing hope when a strategy you try doesn’t work. I bet that every person who shared their answer above has tried dozens of different strategies to get fit. Heck, I bet they tried most things that worked for other people until they found the one that worked for her.
What we can learn from this: “Hope is this Warrior feeling that destroys cynicism“And it’s okay to hope that every failed attempt means one less strategy to try in the future.
For example, if you’ve tried keto five times and can’t stick it out, congratulations! You’ve found the diet that doesn’t work for you.
If you can keep that “Beta testing” mentality The phrase “I’ll see if it works for me” may be the first domino you fall for your Trip!
LESSON 2: Beware the charlatan.
If you spend enough time on social media, you’ll eventually come across health and wellness charlatans. These are the people who tell you they alone have this a solution to all your problems. They often have a villain for everything evil in the world (“It’s sugar! It’s carbs! It’s X ingredient!”).
And sure enough, once they’ve stoked the fear and scared the crap out of you, they give you hope with their expensive, unregulated supplement or foolproof system.
As you can see in the examples above, there is no “one size fits all” solution to this problem. Each person is a unique madman with different baggage and different triggers, traumas, and experiences that make certain solutions a home run and other solutions fail.
You can read more about how to recognize and avoid charlatans in my recent essay here: “How not to go crazy on the Internet.”
That brings me to my third point!
LESSON THREE: All stories about getting fit have three boring things in common!
While all of these “simple” solutions to getting in shape are different, they all share a few similarities.
The good news? None of these things are revolutionary, proprietary or fancy.
To get fit you literally need three things:
- Eat the right number of calories for your goal weight
- Get some form of physical exercise
- Make these two things part of a lifelong lifestyle adjustment.
Weight loss is not magic. It’s about math and behavior change.
As I cover in mine Guide to losing weightScience agrees on this.
Any diet can work if it puts us in a calorie deficit. We have Coaching of clients who eat a vegan diet, others follow a ketogenic diet, some count calories and others do intermittent fasting.
Our ability to transform dietary changes into a lifestyle we can live with is the reason for our success, and that looks different for everyone.
Speaking of lifestyle changes, most of the answers above are also about finding ways to make exercise a regular part of life.
Remember: It’s okay that you don’t like exercising. We are not designed to love sports! Especially when it’s an activity that we don’t actually enjoy! We are designed to survive in times of scarcity, NOT to thrive in times of unlimited abundance.
How do we make exercise a part of our lifestyle?
We must find ways to achieve this making exercise fun, useful or necessary:
- Fun: Join a walking/running club with friends, try it Temptation bundling.
- Advantageous: fall in love with become stronger and more confident and how much better you feel after training.
- Necessary: Pay for a trainer in advance, park at the end of the lot, ride your bike to work.
Remember that hope is the warrior emotion.
We humans are incredibly adaptable creatures that are capable of change.
Keep trying different strategies, beware of the charlatans and don’t forget the basics!
And soon you too could experience the first domino that changes everything for you.
-Steve
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